Social Media Fatigue

Awhile back I had posted about the problems with Facebook. It's not just Facebook, though. I won't list all the different social media sites, but I think very few don't suffer from the same issues of being designed to lead to addiction and brainwashing.

Mark Zuckerberg has just been quoted as being for free speech or freedom of expression. I get that. One of the most powerful tools for the oppressed under totalitarian regimes is the ability to use social media to get their message out to the world.

Cory Doctorow's After the Siege paints a different picture of broadcasting an oppressed society gone wrong. He also talks about how awesome it would be to put the power of technology and smart sensors into the hand of the people and not the other way around.

Why isn’t it creepy for you to know when the next bus is due, but it is creepy for the bus company to know that you’re waiting for a bus?

Why is it creepy that when I go to The Guardian's website to read Doctorow's column about corporations and the government surveilling us I get a warning about the cookies being placed on my computer to track me as I visit the site?

As important as it is to work through the issues of all the data constantly tracking everything we do, backing it up a minute to the original, less complicated thought, there's just a fatigue that sets in trying to keep up with everything.

Going back 20 years, when email was pretty much the only thing close to what you could call a social media tool, I was always on top of my email, answering any message quickly and reading everything that came to my inbox. As spam clogged things up and a variety of other options popped up, whether that was Twitter or Facebook or Instagram or just about anything else, I have found that I will generally have a primary or favorite platform at any one time. If I'm staying on top of Instagram, Twitter suffers, and vice versa. Email suffered to where I don't read most of what comes in my email and what I do read is usually days later, because I was staying on top of something else.

So 5 months ago, while on vacation, I just stopped dealing with social media. It wasn't really on purpose. I wanted to enjoy the vacation. I meant to post some pictures from it but never did, and all of a sudden it's been 5 months. When I mention it to people (sparingly, not in a vegan or crossfit way of mentioning it to people), I've not heard kickback from it. It's generally been positive, as I got the feeling they wished they could give it up, too.

I was aware of the social media fatigue before and my behavior of switching platforms and not being able to keep up with all of them at the same time, but I hadn't realized how freeing it would be to just give it all up together.